Since the merchandise service life decreases recently due to a variety of merchandise items, and the number of consumers with customization service orientation increases along with the penetration of the Internet, the necessity of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and one-to-one marketing has received a great deal of attention. These methods are very effective for purposes of increasing the customer satisfaction and winning and networking new customers.
The one-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing. Personal attribute information such as the age, sex, hobby, taste, and purchase log of each customer is stored as a database. The contents of the information are analyzed, and a proposal that meets customer's needs is presented. A typical method is variable print. Especially, along with the recent progress in DTP (DeskTop Publishing) technology and the spread of digital printers, variable print systems have been developed, which customize and output a document for each customer. Such a variable print system is required to create a customized document in which contents in quantity that changes for each customer are laid out in an optimum manner.
Generally, when such a customized document is to be created by a variable print system, containers are laid out on the document. A container indicates a partial region to draw a content (drawing content) and is sometimes called a field region. More specifically, containers are laid out on the document, and a database and the layout are associated with each other (each content in the database is associated with each container). With this operation, a customized document (document) is created. In this specification, such a document will be referred to as a variable data document.
In the variable print system, a content which is different for each customer can be inserted in each of the containers laid out. The size of data to be inserted in a content is flexible. If the size of a container is fixed, the following problem arises. For example, when text data having a size larger than the container size is inserted, the text cannot wholly be displayed in the container. Alternatively, when image data having a size larger than the container size is inserted, the image is partially missing. Such a problem is called overflow.
If the content is image data, the image may be reduced and drawn in the container. However, the image may be excessively small. There is also proposed a technique in which if text data whose size is larger than a fixed container size is inserted, the font size of the text is reduced to display the entire text in the container. However, if the font size is adjusted, it may be too small to balance the whole document, or the document may become difficult to read.
The “layout design apparatus” of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discloses an automatic layout technique to solve the above-described problems. In this technique, when the size of a container becomes large, the size of an adjacent container is reduced to maintain the interval between them.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658, however, the interval between adjacent containers is fixed. In this specification, association between adjacent containers will be referred to as a link. The interval (distance) between the adjacent containers will be referred to as the length of the link. Assume that a link is set between containers, and the length of the link is fixed, as in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658. In this case, even when both containers are to be enlarged to optimum sizes, it may be impossible to enlarge them to ideal sizes because of the fixed length of the link between the containers. The link aims at preventing the containers from overlapping when they are enlarged to optimum sizes corresponding to the inserted data amounts. However, the length of the link is fixed. For this reason, even when containers A and B, which have a link therebetween, are to be enlarged to optimum sizes, the length of the link always exists between the containers A and B. Hence, enlargement of the containers A and B is inhibited to some extent because of the relationship to the size of the page area in which the containers A and B are laid out.
Conversely, assume that the data amounts inserted in the containers are small. Since the distance between the containers A and B is kept constant because of the link with the fixed size, reduction of the containers A and B is limited, and the container sizes may be larger than necessary. That is, the container size cannot be optimized. To keep a ratio due to the presence of an image, it may be enlarged carelessly. In addition, if, e.g. a text having a smaller size than the container size is inserted (the number of characters is smaller than expected), the characters may be laid out in a small region as compared to the container region. In this case, the container has a blank, and the layout is not great-looking.
As described above, a user may expect automatic layout in which priority is given to making containers having optimum sizes, and the length of the link between the containers decreases or increases to some degree. However, the prior art which uses the fixed link length cannot implement the automatic layout.